A/N – Chapelites, a deep and heartfelt apology to you all for such an agonizing delay in updating Savage Wings! As you all know, I took a break to write the Universal Pictures commissioned short story, The Whispering of Bitter Creek, which, thanks to all of you who read, voted and commented managed to reach #11 in the horror charts here on Wattpad. But I am pleased to say that normal service can now finally resume and Savage Wings is back!

I hope you're ready for Megan's next adventure? As always, thank you so much for your patience and continued support and please do hit that little star button and leave a comment, you know how much I love to hear from you all.

Lots of love,

Linz xxxx

********

"Spend much time in the headmaster's office when you were a kid?"

I shot Harper an admiring glance as he stood by the desk, fastening the buckle on his belt. He was still shirtless and little beads of perspiration glistened on his chest, making me feel strangely proud that I'd worked him so bloody hard. I had to admit, even my legs still felt a little shaky from the effort.

"Are you kidding me?" He grinned back, his face still sporting an alluring post-coital flush. "I was never at school long enough to get sent to the principal's office."

"That says a lot," I mused with a wink. His arm shot out and caught my wrist, tugging me towards him where he wrapped his arms tightly around my waist, pulling me against his still-warm body. His hot gaze lingered on my mouth as he ran his tongue over the sharp point of one of his incisors.

"You'd better be careful, Miss Garrick, or I might have to bend you over my desk," he mock-scolded, his emerald eyes blazing so much heat that suddenly the thought of round two put the strength right back into my legs.

I curled my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, tugging hard enough to make him moan involuntarily. "I think you did that already, Mr. Cain."

"Hmm," he murmured, brushing his lips against mine. "Thank goodness for these old mahogany desks, that's all I'm gonna say. Don't make 'em like this anymore."

His old Bostonian accent rose to the surface, sending a thrill through me to hear it. That subtle American twang of his always reminded me of when we first met. It brought back all those forbidden feelings of wanting to know more about the mysterious American who had come to my aid outside the club, of those early days when I had embarked on something I knew I shouldn't have been doing, something dangerous and exciting. A little bit like letting him take me over this desk in what was once the headmaster's office, with the others located in the various other rooms just down the corridor.

"So," he said, running a fingertip lightly along my collarbone. "What about you? Spend much time in the principal's office when you were young?"

"Nope, I was as good as gold."

"Teacher's pet, huh? Typical." His mouth curled into an arrogant smirk. "Lucky for you that I came along and showed you the error of your ways, right?"

"Oh," I said, raising a brow. "Is that what you call it? Funny, because I could have sworn that what you actually did was stalk me, dump me in your basement and then kill me?"

He rolled his eyes. "You're never going to let that go, are you? You know, I could have really killed you but I'm a generous guy, I figured you deserved a break."

"A break?" I cried. "You call that giving someone a break?"

"Hey, I was the definition of restraint, I'll have you know."

"You were an asshole, Cain."

"Harsh, angel, very harsh. You'll hurt my feelings saying shit like that."

He pouted in a way only Harper Cain could and I had to chuckle, prompting him to pick me up and dump me quite unceremoniously back on the desk. Parting my thighs with his own, he pushed against me and I resisted the urge to glide my hands down his chest and undo that belt buckle. He leant forward, placing a hand either side of me, a wicked glint in his eyes that seemed to challenge me to do exactly what I was thinking. The heat bristled between us once more and I simultaneously loved and hated how easily he could flip the switch and make me want him all over again.

"You know, I really think it's about time I punished you for all this insubordination."

"Punish me? How very Fifty Shades of you."

"Huh?" he said, confusion flickering in his eyes.

"Forget it, Cain, just forget it." I laughed then, wrapping my arms around his neck and planting a kiss on his puzzled face. "But listen, I'm all for you showing me the error of my ways yet again, but hold that thought, yeah? Right now I have to go see Lucius."

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course." I brushed off the question with a wide grin. "I just wanted to see if he had any idea about this whole Tyburn Tree thing that Fenton mentioned."

Earlier on, I'd filled Harper in about my conversation with Fenton - before the incident with the desk in the headmaster's office. Of course, I didn't tell him quite everything, as I doubted very much Fenton would have appreciated me divulging every gory little detail, especially not to Harper. I did, however, tell him what Fenton had said about the Deadly Never Green Tree and Harper had agreed to come with me the next evening to investigate the convent.

Harper sighed regretfully. "Okay, I guess we can postpone...gives me plenty of time to think up all the things I'm going to do to you." His fingertips grazed my lips lightly and then trailed down to my throat, where his thumb brushed lightly over the skin in soft maddening strokes, leaving me under no illusion as to what punishment he intended to inflict there.

After stealing a few more long lingering kisses, I finally, and reluctantly, untangled myself from him and headed for a quick shower before he could turn up and make me change my mind about going to find Lucius. Harper's powers of persuasion could be pretty strong at times and I desperately needed to speak with the boy, only of course, not about the Tyburn Tree as I'd claimed. I'd hated how quickly and easily the lie had tripped off my tongue but I knew it would be foolish to tell Harper what I really wanted to speak to the boy about and what I planned to do.

He would use every trick in the book to try and stop me and I wouldn't blame him at all for trying. In fact, a part of me really wished he would because I knew it was madness.

The kind of madness I could not escape from.

******

I hovered in the doorway for a moment, watching Lucius in the classroom next to the science lab.

While rooting around in the store cupboard, Fenton had managed to find a box of marker pens that hadn't dried out and Lucius had accepted them with wide excited eyes as if he'd been presented with a whole year's supply of chocolate. It was with that same expression he now stood in front of the white board, with a blue marker pen in one gloved hand. Every now and then he would stand back from the board, marvelling at his handiwork which appeared to be a mixture of random doodles and letters that seem to make no sense whatsoever. He seemed quite taken with writing his own name, over and over, and as I stepped into the room and approached the board, I felt a small burst of pride to see Megan there too, and Harper.

Very little of the board was free of Lucius' scribblings – well, at least the part he could reach anyway. The top half of the board was covered with the faded markings of what looked like mathematical equations, something that always used to fill me with dread when I was back in high school.

Lucius stepped back from the board, pen brandished like a weapon and a small frown scarring his forehead.

"What the matter?" I asked.

"No space left," he said, his bottom lip protruding in an adorable pout.

"Well," I said, reaching for the cloth by the board. "Just wipe it out and start again, it's not permanent ink...."

"No!" cried Lucius, grabbing my arm quickly before I could touch the cloth to the board. "No, don't wipe it away. I want to keep it." He fixed me with a very stern glare and I had to stifle a giggle before realising it probably wasn't the best idea to rile the one person with the power to open the Gates of Hell.

"Okay, okay, I won't wipe it." I glanced around, my eyes quickly falling on the desk nearby. "Here," I said, grabbing the edge and dragging it with some effort in front of the board. I pulled myself onto the table and reached for Lucius' hand. "Come on, you'll be able to reach the top this way."

He eagerly scrambled onto the desk and we stood there for a moment, hand in hand, studying the empty white space in front of us.

"What do you want to ask me?" Lucius said finally.

I stared at him in amazement. "How do you do it? How is it you always seem to know when I need you?"

The boy shrugged. "I don't know, I just do." He smiled then, one of those toothy grins that made my heart melt and I squeezed his gloved hand gently in response.

I hesitated, trying to work out how to put into words everything I had been thinking since my last dismal visit to Purgatory.

Fenton had been right. I was dishonouring Garrick's memory by refusing to believe his faith in me was warranted, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't wipe that image of Caelan's stricken face from my mind. I couldn't rid myself of the knowledge that I had failed her terribly; that despite what Lucifer had said, there must have been something I could have done. After all, what good is an archangel who cannot save souls from an eternity of torment? Is that what Michael would have done? Would he have stood back and watched the Devil's underlings take whomever they pleased?

And then there was that fact that Josiah's warning, which had been creeping around like a persistent whisper in my mind since I left the chapel, was now screaming at me to be heard and the more I listened, the more troubled I felt. This idea that archangels weren't quite the benevolent beings I believed them to be had rocked me harder than I'd cared to admit. Angels were meant to be the good guys, they weren't meant to do deals for souls and go around blinding anyone who got in their way. That wasn't how it was meant to be. And yet if the angels weren't the good guys, then what were they? And what did that make me?

"Lucius, could I have saved her?"

"Yes," he replied and I felt the knife twist a little deeper in my gut.

"Should I have saved her?"

I wanted him to say no. With one word he could absolve my guilt, even if deep down, I knew I had no right to be relieved of any blame involving Caelan's fate. I'd put her there after all. I'd killed her.

"I don't know," he said. "You are the way. Only you can decide."

"That doesn't really help me. I don't know how Michael decides who gets saved and who doesn't. He made me and taught me nothing. I feel like a kid turning up to school and finding there's no teacher."

"Why do you need a teacher? You know what to do. You did it once already."

"You mean the thing with the wings?"

The little boy nodded.

"But Lucius, I have no idea how I did that. I just sort of....happened. I didn't feel I like I had any control over it. One moment the souls were fighting to get to me, then there was the pain....that awful, terrible pain...." I broke off, remembering all too clearly how it felt when the wings tore free of my body, of how it felt like the demons were tearing at my skin with their talons, ripping open the flesh right down to the bone.

"Do you know your problem? You think too much."

I stared at the little boy, my eyes widening in amusement. "You're very cheeky for an eight year old. I think you've been hanging around Harper a little too much lately. I might need to limit your time with him, he's clearly becoming a bad influence."

"I like Harper. He's funny," the little boy retorted with a scowl.

"Really? Harper?"

Lucius nodded and began to giggle. "He tells really funny jokes. There was this one about a nun and a priest...."

"What?" I shrieked.

"But he said not to tell you because your voice would get all high and screechy."

"He said what? " I repeated, but I stopped when I saw Lucius looking up at me with that cheeky grin on his face.

I couldn't remember ever hearing the surly Harper Cain crack any kind of joke like that, in fact, I wasn't aware he even knew any. Being with Lucius clearly brought out a side to Harper I never knew existed and I couldn't help but mirror Lucius' smile with one of my own, feeling a warmth for both of them I knew was only going to cause me a whole heap of trouble.

"So I think too much? What does that mean?"

"It's not about what you think, but how you feel. When your wings came, you didn't think...you just....did it."

"Like...instinct, you mean?"

"Uh-huh, kind of. And that's how you help them. Saving them isn't about thinking. It's about feeling. That's how Michael does it and that's how you will do it. You don't need a teacher for that. It's how he made you."

I inhaled deeply, latching onto his words and desperately wanting to believe them, but instinctively I knew there was only one way I was going to learn to accept it as the truth. It was, after all, the reason I had sought out Lucius in the first place.

"You want to go back, don't you?"

He fixed those big blue eyes upon me and in them I saw him, the real Lucius, Lost Child of the Nephilim, the boy who knew far more than his appearance would have it seem, the boy who saw in me far more than I even knew existed.

"Want?" I laughed, but there was no humour in the sound. "I can honestly say I've never wanted to do anything less than go back, but I know that I have to. I have no choice." I forced a smile. "And besides, practice makes perfect, right?"

Tugging free from my grip, he removed his glove and shoved it into his jeans pocket. Holding out his hand, he wriggled his fingers as if he'd forgotten what they looked like under the glove.

"Remember," he whispered. "The mirror lies.....it will show you want you want to see but it isn't real, Megan, remember that, okay?"

"I don't understand..." I began but Lucius was already clutching hold of my hand.

I felt the warmth of his palm for a split second, saw a brief glimpse of the sadness in his gaze and then he was gone and I was plunged into darkness once again.

******

The darkness was alive.

It moved and writhed like a living pulsating entity, only there was no life here. Here, the dead things waited, desperately trying to cling on to the memories of the lives they once had, memories that over time would warp into something misshapen and deformed, something ugly and twisted until they barely remembered who they once were. And somewhere in the darkness, were the demons, ready to whisper their lies and obscenities, ready to turn the heads of those trapped here with promises of something better than this, when all they really offered them was eternal torment and suffering.

I wondered how many of them had been claimed because Michael had handed his responsibility to someone who didn't have a clue how to step into his shoes. I wondered how many of them had been taken because of my refusal to believe I could do this. I thought of Caelan, I remembered her screams and the way she had clawed at the air to reach me and resolved then and there, that this time it would be different. I wouldn't let them have another Caelan. I wouldn't let them take another that belonged to me, to Michael.

The light that emanated from my skin appeared weak and sickly at first, barely strong enough to dent the gloom and yet I knew to their eyes it was like a beacon. To their eyes, I was the lighthouse, refracting my shine across the sea, permeating the thick fog that shrouded every soul in its cold embrace. My light, as dull as it seemed at that moment, was the only light they had, the only respite from the crushing grip of the shadows that engulfed them.

Faces floated in the dark as they moved towards me, slowly at first, their steps sluggish as if wading through tar, dragging their feet like the zombies of old horror movies, before Hollywood upped the ante and gave them the speed and agility to catch you. I felt my breath quicken as they moved closer and closer, as I saw their arms reach out, as I felt the dead air shift around me and knowing that very soon, I would feel their grasping, needy touch on my skin.

With a sense of escalating panic that threatened to send me running back to Lucius, I knew that my fear was disabling me, preventing me from seeing what they really were – not nightmarish ghouls, but beings who once had names and beating hearts, who once knew joy and laughter, sunlight and song. I had to do something and the more I could see of them, the worse the fear felt. In the end, I did the only thing I could and that was to close my eyes to it all. I closed my eyes to their pain and suffering, I closed my eyes to their gaping mouths and their pale, grotesque bodies that pushed against me.

With arms outstretched, I welcomed their touch, feeling unknown hands grasping mine and the warmth of the light travelling over my skin. I sensed it was getting brighter now, but still I did not open my eyes. I sensed the oppressive weight of hundreds, thousands, more even, but still I did not look. Instead, I inhaled deeply, ignoring the sulphurous acrid stench of the dead and concentrating on nothing but my connection with them.

Saving them isn't about thinking. It's about feeling.

When they started to hum, low and deep, it was like the distant rumble of thunder rolling across the sea, like the choral thrum of thousands upon thousands of baritone voices and I felt the vibrations pass through me from the roots of my hair to my fingertips. Slowly, they began to sway in time and I moved with them, feeling every note they sang like the gentle lapping of waves over my body. Voice upon voice joined the choir, the rich timbre of tenors, the high, sweet notes of the sopranos, all combining together to create the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

And as each soul sang, I realised that I could hear beyond the choir, I could hear each and every one of them, no longer a mass of jumbled voices, but individuals each calling out to me in song. I could hear every one, I could feel every one and as soon as that connection was made, I saw them. Even though my eyes were still closed in rapture, I saw the every face behind the voice, I could pick them out within the crowd as if there was a line connecting them to me, a pathway leading me right to where they stood.

As the pain hit, like a scalding thunderbolt to my spine, it was no less torturous than it had been the first time. In fact, if anything, it felt more intense, maybe because I had been anxiously anticipating the agony and knew exactly what was coming. Yet when it erupted down my back, tearing skin from bone, it came without the debilitating fear I had experienced on the previous occasion and although I felt that the wings might indeed rip me in two as they burst free from my flesh, I accepted the pain, I accepted the suffering. They were mine, my burden, my wings and as they unfurled, almost knocking me off balance, a strange sensation hit me, almost harder than the pain had.

I knew then that this was right, this was true, maybe even the truest feeling I had ever experienced in my whole life. And yes, it might have hurt like uncontrollable flames were licking at my back, but this was meant to be. This was who I was, what I was created to become.

The light exploded all around me, spreading out in a dazzling orb of silver, sending those closest to me stumbling backwards, even though their chorus did not fade for one second. Somehow I managed to stay upright as my body adjusted to the weight of the wings, making my legs tremble for a moment before I held out my arms to balance myself, as if I was navigating the thin tenuous line of a tightrope.

Automatic synapses sparked in my brain and I almost laughed out loud when the wings started to move, when I instructed them to move, watching in stunned amazement as they began to slowly, but powerfully, beat back and forth. The glimmering wings spread out either side of me as I began to rise, my feet dangling beneath me as I stopped about six foot off the ground. Hovering in mid-air, I marvelled at the full span of them and how the feathers shimmered, sending glass-like shards of silvery radiance into the shadows. Around me, the voices rose in unison and the glow burned brighter and stronger than ever before. Tendrils of light began to stretch out from the edges of the orb that surrounded me, snaking out across the sea of souls, seeking out those faces I had seen just moments ago.

The connection had been made and could not be severed. They were mine now, they were Michael's and I had claimed each and every one that the light now touched. As I scanned the tide of faces I saw how many there were, how very many I had found, how many I was about to save. The beams of light stretched out like an incandescent spider-web and I felt everything they felt as I pulled them up out of the crowd and they rose up, following the luminescent pathway towards me.

As the light absorbed them whole, I felt so elated, so triumphant and totally drunk on what I had finally managed to do, that I didn't see the demons advancing. I failed to see how they had infiltrated the crowd, how they dug their claws into the backs of the ones left behind for the next Judgement, how they whispered into their ears. I didn't see any of it until it was too late.

Unable to touch me themselves, the demons did what they did best and spread their lies like a virus, which swiftly spread through the awaiting souls, infecting each one in turn and transforming faces of expectant joy, to ones filled with a maddening twisted hatred, because I hadn't deigned to choose them.

The first tug on my ankle made the orb shimmer around me. The second was forceful enough to swing me off balance as I hovered in the air and I looked down in alarm to see them amassing below, their hungry arms outstretched, desperate to reach me. In panic, I tried to shake off my assailant, but another soon grabbed hold, then another, and with fear spiking in my gut I realised they were pulling me down, down, down towards them. I tried to kick out but to no avail and I watched with dismay as the light enveloping me began to fade and the demons grinned wickedly in the shadows, their long tongues slicking over rows upon rows of sharp deadly teeth.

My screams rang out as I was dragged into the furious melee. Rough hands grabbed me, fingernails digging deep, gouging at my skin. Prostrate on the ground, I shrieked as they stamped on my hands, my arms, my legs. I cried out as they grabbed fistfuls of feathers, ripping them from my wings, leaving behind nothing but great bloodied smears. Shockwaves thundered through me at the force of their attack and I desperately tried to gather the energy to rise up again, only for them to trample upon my wings, falling upon me in such a terrible rage that the light on my skin disappeared completely, leaving me in utter darkness.

A blow to my head sent me spiraling onto my back and I lay there, stunned, feeling the shadows moving in on all sides, consciousness fading by the second as they continued their barrage of hatred against me.

When the blazing shaft of light shattered the darkness, sending everyone, soul and demon alike, scattering into the gloom, even I had to close my eyes in fear it would blind me. The harsh white beam was so powerful, so formidable that I whimpered as it engulfed me, even though it had frightened away my tormentors. I whimpered still when I felt my bruised and battered body lifted from the ground, when I felt strong arms encapsulate me in a tight embrace and when I heard that soft, gentle voice whispering my name over and over.

Defying the pain, I wrenched open my eyes and stared up into those captivating rainbow irises full of weighty anxious concern.

"Sleep, dearest Megan. Fear nothing, for you are safe. No harm shall befall you now."

Lucifer smiled a warm and beautiful smile but I was afraid and even when sleep did finally consume me, I carried that fear with me into the nightmares that awaited.